Anticipatory and consummatory pleasure and displeasure in major depressive disorder: An experience sampling study

Pleasure and displeasure can be parsed into anticipatory and consummatory phases. However, research on pleasure and displeasure in major depressive disorder (MDD), a disorder characterized by anhedonia, has largely focused on deficits in the consummatory phase. Moreover, most studies in this area have been laboratory-based, raising the question of how component processes of pleasure and displeasure are experienced in the daily lives of depressed individuals. Using experience sampling, we compared anticipatory and consummatory pleasure and displeasure for daily activities reported by adults with MDD (n = 41) and healthy controls (n = 39). Participants carried electronic devices for one week and were randomly prompted eight times a day to answer questions about activities to which they most and least looked forward. Compared to healthy controls, MDD participants reported blunted levels of both anticipatory and consummatory pleasure and elevated levels of both anticipatory and consummatory displeasure for daily activities. Independent of MDD status, participants accurately predicted pleasure but overestimated displeasure. These results are the first to provide evidence that, across both anticipatory and consummatory phases, individuals with MDD experience blunted pleasure and elevated displeasure for daily activities. Our findings clarify the disturbances in pleasure and displeasure that characterize MDD and may inform treatment for this debilitating disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record

Inhibition Versus Switching Deficits in Different Forms of Rumination

Individuals who depressively ruminate about their current dysphoria tend to perseverate more than nonruminators. The goal of the current study was to determine whether such perseverative tendencies are associated with an inability to switch attention away from old to new information or with an inability to effectively inhibit the processing of previously relevant information. We used a task-switching paradigm that can distinguish between these two processes. Two experiments showed that depressive rumination is associated with a deficit in inhibiting prior mental sets. The second experiment also demonstrated that, in contrast to depressive rumination, angry and intellectual rumination are associated with difficulties in switching to a new task set, but not with inhibition of a prior task set. This study suggests that different forms of rumination are associated with different cognitive mechanisms and that both deficits may contribute to the perseveration that is associated with ruminative tendencies.

An attentional scope model of rumination

Rumination, defined as repetitive thinking about negative information, has been found to lead to serious maladaptive consequences, including longer and more severe episodes of major depression. In this review, we present and discuss research findings motivated by the formulation that individual differences in cognitive processes that control how information is processed influence the likelihood that thoughts will become repetitive and negative. Several studies have demonstrated that a tendency to ruminate (i.e., trait rumination) is related to difficulties updating working memory (WM) and disengaging from and forgetting no-longer-relevant information. Other investigators have documented that trait rumination is also associated with an enhanced ability to ignore distracting information and with more stable maintenance of task-relevant information. In contrast to trait rumination, a state of rumination has been found to be related to widespread deficits in cognitive control. In this article, we discuss how the current accounts of control functioning cannot explain this pattern of anomalous control functioning. To explain these findings, including unexpected and contradictory results, we present an attentional scope model of rumination that posits that a constricted array of thoughts, percepts, and actions that are activated in WM or available for selection from long-term memory affects the control functioning of trait ruminators. This model explains, at a cognitive level, why rumination is particularly likely to arise when individuals are in a negative mood state; it also accounts for a number of findings outside of the rumination-control literature and generates several novel predictions.

When mental inflexibility facilitates executive control: beneficial side effects of ruminative tendencies on goal maintenance

Although previous research suggests that depressive ruminators tend to become stuck in a particular mind-set, this mental inflexibility may not always be disadvantageous; in some cases, it may facilitate active maintenance of a single task goal in the face of distraction. To evaluate this hypothesis, we tested 98 college students, who differed in ruminative tendencies and dysphoria levels, on two executive-control tasks. One task emphasized fast-paced shifting between goals (letter naming), and one emphasized active goal maintenance (modified Stroop). Higher ruminative tendencies predicted more errors on the goal-shifting task but fewer errors on the goal-maintenance task; these results demonstrated that ruminative tendencies have both detrimental and beneficial effects. Moreover, although ruminative tendencies and dysphoria levels were moderately correlated (r = .42), higher dysphoria levels predicted more errors on the goal-maintenance task; this finding indicates that rumination and dysphoria can have opposing effects on executive control. Overall, these results suggest that depressive rumination reflects a trait associated with more stability (goal maintenance) than flexibility (goal shifting).

Cognitive control mechanisms, emotion and memory: a neural perspective with implications for psychopathology

In this paper we provide a focused review of the literature examining neural mechanisms involved in cognitive control over memory processes that can influence, and in turn are influenced by, emotional processes. The review is divided into two parts, the first focusing on working memory and the second on long-term memory. With regard to working memory, we discuss the neural bases of (1) control mechanisms that can select against distracting emotional information, (2) mechanisms that can regulate emotional reactions or responses, (3) how mood state influences cognitive control, and (4) individual differences in control mechanisms. For long-term memory, we briefly review (1) the neural substrates of emotional memory, (2) the cognitive and neural mechanisms that are involved in controlling emotional memories and (3) how these systems are altered in post-traumatic stress disorder. Finally, we consider tentative generalizations that can be drawn from this relatively unexplored conjunction of research endeavors.